There are so many folks that are making major decisions and significant sacrifices in following the Lord in the vision he’s given us.  I would name names, but I don’t want to embarrass or dishonor anyone.  While I’m thinking of three specific guys right now, I can easily add another 6-8 other women and men who are being seriously challenged and encouraged in what it means to be a “follow me” disciple.   When I say “serious” I mean giving up jobs, moving, not taking jobs that would mean moving away, being “downwardly mobile” in income to stay close…  Things that make zero sense in a materialistic, consumer culture.  Things that if we use the American Dream as a standard of judgment are a nightmare. 

 I ran across the following passage from Dallas Willard who explains the significance of what people are doing better than I ever could.  He writes, “…one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God.  But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.

“Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.  In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).  The cross-shaped yolk of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.” (Devotional Classics by Foster and Smith, p.16)

For those of you who are being faithful in midst of discipleship situations that are both perilous and terrifying on the one hand, yet at the same time are full of real life and meaning I just want to say how much I appreciate your example.  It gives me and the rest of our small community a greater strength to follow and an example of courage to emulate. 

You may think no one notices and that you are alone, but you are not.  You may not even feel like you have a choice.  That the Lord has cornered you.  Yet every time you have an easy out you don’t take it.  Every time you an opportunity to duck your head and go an easier way you don’t take the temptation.    The Lord sees.  We see.  He’s doing great things in and through you.  Thanks for being faithful to Him. 

In Acts 10 we read about the second Pentecost, how the Lord demonstrates that he is calling the Gentiles and not just the Jews by having the same outpouring as in Acts 2.  In the chapter we see the Lord calling Cornelius the Centurion, then talking with Peter.  Peter is amazed when he puts the timeline together, the vision, and the reality of what is going on (v.34-43). 

In November of 2006 I met a guy named Ray Gonzalez.  In talking about our multicultural vision he put me in touch with Dave Park.  In talking with Dave about needs for help in music ministry he put me in touch with Peter Choi, Jr.  In spending time with Dave and Peter I found friends whose hearts beat in rhythm with our vision.  I could listen and talk with these guys for hours.  I always come away refreshed and challenged. 

Peter shared a story yesterday that made me think of Acts 10 and God’s chess moves. 

Last week Peter and I went to Pearl Lane on the last day of the after-school program.  I wanted to see my guys before summer started, and Peter wanted to see the reality of what he hears me talking about all the time.  We drove into Chamblee.  I was giving directions and pointed out that Pearl Lane was just behind the big building that housed a Realtor and other business.  I talked with Peter about the area and the ministry and my desire to be able to office in or near Pearl lane so that I could really work in the neighborhood. 

Peter told me yesterday (almost a week to the day of going to Pearl Lane) that several months prior the folks he was working with to develop a new ministry had been given office space.  One of their cohort of visionaries had parents who owned a building and were willing to give them office space.  But the office looked out over some pretty unappealing low-income housing in run-down part of the city.  While the aesthetics were unappealing, the price was great – free.  Yet in the past several months they hadn’t taken advantage of the space.  It was sitting empty.  As it turns out the office was the office next door to Pearl Lane.  The office space, if I understood Peter correctly, looks out over Re Kim’s old house (see the post on chemo therapy and vacuum cleaners) and the ministry center. 

Peter said he didn’t say anything at Pearl Lane because he was too busy repenting for complaining about an office that overlooked such an ugly, forsaken place (my words not his).  Peter was amazed at the “slice of heaven” (his words) that he experienced in the chaos of the after-school program.  What we were both amazed about was the fact that the Lord was pulling our lives together before we ever knew each other existed and before we knew what we really wanted in ministry.  The Lord took these amazing visionaries (Peter, Dave, and the dozen other folks they are with) and brought our lives together in the Lord’s work .  They started with a specific vision for ministry only to see the Lord working in their lives without their knowing it or their consent in developing a ministry that was not exactly part of the original plan. 

One of my take-aways is that plans and visions are good and necessary. Just be sure that they have enough flexibility to respond to and follow God when he throws a wrench in the works.  I would have never talked with Ray without the crisis we were in (God changing the church’s direction).  I would have never talked with Dave about music ministry without a separate the crisis of loosing people.  I would have never invited Peter along except for the need for more help in an under-staffed after-school program.  Nowhere in my plans were the recruitment of talented, visionary Korean-Americans to partner with in ministry.  I’m sooo glad that God has better plans than I do! 

Our job is to obey as we go.  His job is to provide the vision, the means, and the resources to do what he is calling us to.  And he does so with abundance, delightful surprises, crisis, and dependence on him. 

Peace

We talk a lot about being “missional.”  “Missional” means being where God sends us, with the people he is calling us to love, doing what his Word calls us to do to actually love, all for his glory and honor.  From this list one can see that a lot of activity is involved in our conception of “missional.”  Which is cool in the sense that it helps us to be counter-cultural in a world (especially a church world) of “cheap talk” and marketing slogans.  At the same time, it can be deceptive in that it lends itself to the trap of things in the Kingdom of God being boiled down to technique, method, or recipe.  Which it never is.

 This fact has hit me over and over again over the past weeks and months as I see all that the Lord is doing in our midst.  Sure, we sold a building and moved to a poorer part of town, we made whole-sale changes to vision, mission, strategy, structure, etc.  We’re working hard on our weak areas and trying to implement improvements in music and small groups.  We have lost a lot of people and gained different ones.  We have seen miracles and salvation.  The Lord’s work in us includes techniques and methods and organization.  But these are not keys, they are the result of keys.  The keys are people.  People who respond to God and his word with creativity, devotion, and energy. To quote EM Bounds (I don’t remember the source):

“God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than anything else, because men are God’s method.  The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.  The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men.  He does not come on machines, but on men.  He does not anoint plans, but men.  It is not great talents nor great learning that God needs, but men great in holiness, great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God.” 

In the case of our journey as a church we would have to say that women (as well as men) are God’s method. 

In the stories that I have posted about our “adventures” you will find that they are mostly about people.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the risks, the generosity, the hospitality, and the forgiveness that is starting to describe who the Lord is making us into all comes about in, through people responding to God-given opportunities. 

I say all this by way of preamble to the next post I want to write.  But I didn’t want to get this next post imbedded in this one.  As you will see it needs to stand alone.  But this post is my slap to the forehead reminder to myself (and to anyone else who ever reads this stuff) about what is most important when it comes to actually following the Lord in obedience (being missional).  It means believing in, listening to, supporting, challenging, learning from other disciples:  people, especially people of character. 

I probably shouldn’t be writing while I’m on pain medication for kidney stones, but here we go…

In my more lucid moments I started reading Radical Hospitality by Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt.   The authors write, “We all have some sort of rule we live by, consciously or otherwise.  Your own rule consists of the little things you do that shape your life.”  They go on to say “Your rule of life is nothing more than what you have determined is most important to seeking and maintaining a meaningful existence.  Your rule is a collection of what you think matters…” 

So what makes life meaningful?  Is it a life you are living now, or something you hope to get too down the road?  What matters? 

As I ask myself these questions I find that the wrestling match begins with the definitions of “meaningful”, “value”, “living”.  Is is money in the bank?  Is it cultural cache?  Is it success as measured by title and compensation?  It is the right schools for my kids and their “above average” achievement? 

But I know this isn’t it.  These are big issues which hide the bigger question.  Then it comes.  The big “ah ha!” that has me really thinking.  It’s a story that Homan and Colllins Pratt share:  

“Go with us to a corner of the sprawling market in Mexico City where an old Indian man named Poto-lamo is selling Onions.  Twenty strings of onions lay in front of him.  A guy from Denver walks up and asks, “How much for the string of onions?”

“Ten cents,” replies Poto-lamo

“How much for two strings?”

Poto-lamo fixes his eyes on him and says, “Twenty cents.”

“What about three?”

“Thirty cents.”

“Not much a reduction for quantity.  Would you take twenty-five cents for three?” 

“No.”

“Well, how much for all of it, the whole twenty strings?” 

“I will not sell you the whole twenty strings.”

“Why not?” asks the American.  “Aren’t you here to sell onions?” 

“No,” replies Poto-lamo, “I am here to live my life.  I love this market.  I love the crowds.  I love the sunlight and smells.  I love the children.  I love to have my friends come by and talk about their babies and their crops.  That is my life and for that reason I sit here with y twenty strings of onions.  If I sell all my onions to one customer, then my day is over and I have lost my life that I love — and that I will not do.” 

So there it is…I think.  The thing that I wrestle with but cannot grasp.  The frustration at the center of my existential angst.  In all the groping and striving and shaping of vision and mission and purpose…in all the “big” things, here is the small thing that I sense that I keep missing – awareness of what is right in front of me (something that speed and urgency always steal).  I’m such a striving person.  I don’t have…what?  Rhythm, I think.  A deep exhalation.  An openness to the people and events right in front of me.  A contentment for small graces and simple gifts. 

At least I think that is what it is.  Any ideas? 

Source:  Radical Hospitality. Benedict’s Way of Love by Father Daniel Homan, OSB, and Lonni Collins Pratt (Paraclete Books: Brewster, MA) pp.233. 

John B. Hays writes in his book Sub-merge, “This younger generation seems to be increasingly disenchanted with a faith life that peaks on Sunday and wrestles the remainder of the week in a spiritual crawl space.”  Have you ever felt that kind of claustrophobia?  Like all the promises of God, the glory of the Scriptures, the heart palpitating exaltation of grace is only there as some backdrop to a future-after-you-die hope or – worse – some cruel tease in the face of a 9-5 grind strung together by periods of mind-numbing busyness.   

I think about it a lot.  I pray about it a lot.  Even after selling the building and moving into the warehouse, serving the teachers at Cary Reynolds, working with the kids at Pearl Lane, and all the other blessings we’re encountering.  I think about spritual vitality and quality of life together in all the transitions that we are still involved with like getting the space up to speed, small groups, and the all decisions about ministry and music and worship.  It really hits me when I read Hays’ comment, “As I have listened to young disciples, I sense that they do not want to attend church services that confuse worship and entertainment, joy and enjoy.”  (italics in orginal)  Many of the Open Table folks have shared the same or similar thoughts. 

So what do we do?  Is there any hope?  

John Hays has a remarkable story of coming alive to God’s call for the poor.  It’s one of those stories that really speaks to longings in my own heart.  Longings that I sometimes despair will never happen.  But then I went on a walk today.   

I went to Pearl Lane to talk with one of the kids I work with in the after-school program.  Actually, to talk with his mom and get to know her in order to see if there were ways to work better with her son.  As it turns out Virginia was at the ministry center talking Chin Te Li, one of the Cambodian grandmothers.  We started walking to the apartment down the hot, packed clay paths (there are no sidewalks) strewn with broken glass and debris.  As we passed toddlers and moms and grandmothers sitting outside their duplexes Virginia waved and talked with them.  There was a group of younger kids from the after-school program who saw me and yelled, “Pastor!”   I found my friend playing the equivalent of half-court soccer between some of the units.  Seven or eight sweaty kids laughing and knocking each other down over a ratty old soccer ball with a make-shift goal.  I talked with my friend until his mom came home, and then Virginia and I had the privilege of talking with her.  We learned how to bless her and her son by praying and talking about things going on in their lives.   

On the walk back Virginia talked about a couple of kids about to graduate from high school who had been involved with the ministry center at the beginning.  I realized that I while I have so much more to learn, that I was actually happy.  Aside from the fact that I want to be like Virginia and Sandee when I grow up, I find myself chewing on a more obvious fact – what mattered was being there in time and space. 

Life isn’t shared in the abstract.  Love is not a principle.  A relationship requires time together talking about important things. While none of this is rocket science, it does strike at the heart of many people’s fears (my fears).  Christine D. Pohl in her book “Making Room” asks the question, “Why are we sometimes more willing to help people than to share our lives with them?  Why do we often prefer to serve homeless, elderly, and disabled people rather than to visit or share a meal with them?”  

I don’t have an answer to the question, but I am praying and asking the Lord to show me my heart.  I am talking with my wife and my friends about it.  In our discussion group on Hospitality on Sunday morning we all committed to take this question before the Lord.  I think that this is one of the key answers to getting out of the “spiritual crawlspace” and into the wide-open, terrifyingly wonderful presence of the untamed God. 

It’s not a matter of technique.  It is about letting his hilarious, beautiful grace redefine everything so that fears fall away and we can take hearts full of love to others where they are.  Let’s all talk to God together and ask him to mature us into a people who long to share our lives with other people and not to settle for merely serving them from a distance (geographically, economically, or emotionally). 

I hear and see this in so many of the folks that start working with Cary Reynolds and Pearl Lane.  They (we) fall in love.  In that love people start asking the most amazing question, “How do I move in or closer to be with these people?”  Love is cool.  It’s upclose, personal, and highly addictive.  It makes the Great Commandment to love Him and to love people less a command of obligation and more of a invitation to joy and life.  Peace  Sources:

John B. Hays, “Sub-merge:  Living Deep In A Shallow World – Service, Justice, and Contemplation Among the World’s Poor”

Christine D. Pohl, “Making Room – Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition”

May 3, 2007

I have had a very interesting week in which I have experienced some great highs followed with a generous portion of the Lord’s maturing grace (translation – the Lord removed the scales from my eyes to show me wounds and scars he wants to heal – but which I would prefer to never have to deal with).  I would appreciate your prayers to let the Spirit continue to search and reveal and heal these deep places.  But I what I really wanted to share was a deep, heart-felt “thank you” to everyone who participates in Open Table.    I had a funeral on Friday and pre-marriage counseling on Saturday.  On Sunday I had a sermon, a discussion group/teaching time on Hospitality, and a meeting of the ministry team leaders after church for our quarterly updates.  I then drove an hour to Hiram to teach in a church out there.  When all was said on done I had arrived at church on 5:30 am on Sunday and pulled in for bed at about 8:30 pm.  I was talking with Heather about the day, and my over-riding thought was sheer gratitude for my job.  I was tired, happy, and satisfied.   I kept thinking how amazing it is to be invited into your lives for births, weddings, funerals, graduations, hardships, crisis, and triumphs.  That the Lord has given me the privilege of teaching God’s Word and sharing stories of faith and encouragement in our journey together is an undeserved, stunning honor.  I kept thinking about how, 5 years ago, the congregation listened to the Spirit and offered me – the least qualified candidate – this high privilege of loving you all and being loved by you.  It is so…sacred.  Thank you.   

Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t days when I am less than grateful for all of these privileges.  <grin>  But with all candor and sincerity – from a full and happy heart – I want to say how much you all bless me with your trust and support.  I know you are doing this for the Lord and not directly for me, but as a beneficiary of your giving and love I want you to know how much I appreciate you all.  I am overwhelmed by the goodness of our God. 

April 5, 2007  Easter is here!   A couple of weeks ago I shared the story of picking up a raving Meth addict at the corner of Peachtree Rd and Peachtree Industrial, just up from the new building.  She had been trying unsuccessfully to wave down a ride to get her a few exits down to her part of town.  She was frantic in a combination of frustration, anger, and being strung out.  In the sermon I used her as an example of Jesus’ principle of the importance of the “one” in Matthew 18:3-14.   As I’ve meditated on this bizarre occurrence there have been a lot more things that the Lord has been teaching me.  The most significant for Easter is my identification with this woman.   It is very easy to get an “us vs. them” attitude with people like this.  They are truly horrifying to see and to smell.  This woman, like most meth addicts, has blood red, open sores all over her face, arms, and hands.  Her teeth are rotting out of her skull.  She was so filthy that I had to take very shallow breaths to keep from breathng too deeply.  

She was somewhat coherent, or at least coherent enough to get a ride closer to “home.”  However, she spent most of the time in the car venting, freaking out, shaking, apologizing, crying, telling me how to drive, blessing me, and cursing everyone else.  She never stopped talking, even as she reclined the seat back to “rest.”  The car had barely stopped before she launched herself out of the car and shuffled-stumbled-ran away.    I sat there a bit dazed wondering what in heaven’s name this was all about.  I have two distinct impressions about the encounter.  My first series of thoughts occurred while we were driving.  I had one of those experiences where a multitude of Bible passages shuffles like a deck of cards through my imagination.  I saw all the references to the poor, the afflicted, the demon possessed, and the prisoners.  My mind caught on Jesus’ final public sermon in Matthew 24-25, specifically his sermon on the judgment in 25:31-46.  It’s the one about the sheep and the goats where the sheep take care of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner but the goats do not.  Jesus tells them that as they did (or did not) to the least of these they did (or did not) to him, to Jesus.  So I’m thinking, Jesus is with me right now on Saturday afternoon needing a ride.  It freaked me out because I didn’t start my day thinking, “I’m going to be Jesus’ chauffer today.”  It blessed me, but it also disturbed me.  It’s one thing to imagine the noble poor, the deserving prisoner, or the oppressed-but-righteous sufferer.  It’s another thing to see Jesus with a smelly zombie.   My second distinct reality check from this encounter was to see myself.  While I have never been a methamphetamine addict, I have been eaten alive by the venereal disease of sin.  I have had open, weeping sores infecting my soul while I screamed at a world that just seemed to be driving by oblivious to my plight and my pain.  In fact, the only real difference between me and this woman is that she was polite in her sin.  I was a rebellious, defiant, smoldering ingrate.  The scriptures tell us that we all were to some extent.   This Easter I see Jesus from a very distinct vantage point.  I see his mocking, his beatings, and his torments not for “Noble Tim”, but for “Meth Tim”.  I see my very deserved judgment taken up willingly and lovingly by the Son at the Father’s command.  He took all that was due for my sin and paid it in full.  I see that where this addict left my car still an addict, that when Jesus opened the door and brought me in that I was healed.  He embraced me stink and all, and when he took his arms from around me I was clean, dressed in white.    From what vantage point are you looking at Easter?   Whatever it is I pray that it is a heart-deep reminder of the extent of your sin and the greatness of his love.  I pray that you will be renewed and remade again in the grace of the God that claims all of us sin-zombies as his own, and gives us a pure, holy, eternal life as his beloved child.   All glory, thanksgiving, and praise to him alone. 

Old Post from January 25, 2007

I spent most of yesterday doing a first draft of an assignment for my recent seminary class on explaining the Christian faith and dealing with questions and concerns people have about it.  I approached different people to see if they would help me with the project.  Some I knew, some I didn’t.  The questions were amazing and challenging.  There were deceptively simple questions like “Why do some people where jewelry with Christ still on the Cross?” To questions that go to the heart of Christianities compromises and failures around things like the Inquisition, Witch trials, Crusades, etc.  To why some expressions of the faith take all the Mystery out of God and put him in a box.  To why Christianity makes claims that exclude other religions.  I kept thinking how truly important these questions are not because we have to “defend against them,” but because they force us to think deeper.  In many cases the questions serve to take the blinders off our minds and face the Lord and our lives with honesty.   I was responding to one of the people helping me, and I found this amazing confession bubbling up in me.  I had sort of grasped aspects of it, but not the true implications of it until yesterday.  The question dealt with oppression and violence and compromise by the church.  What I realized was that while I had answers, I found myself “undressed.”  I couldn’t get past my own contributions, my own complicity, in the failures of the church in this generation.  I found myself sharing about my time in

Jacksonville two weeks ago with 2nd Mile ministries who live in and among one of the toughest, most violent, and neglected areas of the city.  They have all had their houses broken into and they are surrounded by drugs, violence, etc.  I wrote, “What shocked me most about the visit was my own extreme, internal revulsion to where they were and what they were doing (a revulsion that conflicted with my amazement and admiration).  What I saw struck fear deep into my suburban, racist soul.  I tried hiding behind the fact of all the changes we have made as a church:  how we are doing things in the public school, the after-school program and our helping out in the sliver of the Hispanic, Cambodian, Vietnamese “ghetto” we have adopted.  But I couldn’t balance the scales.  I don’t think the Lord wants me only marginally racist and self-justifying in that I’m doing certain things that excuse me from doing other things that scare me or I find unacceptable.  After looking for excuses and explanations I found that all I could do was cry and ask for the Lord’s forgiveness and help to change and mature.  I couldn’t deny what was there.  I couldn’t pretend to not be afraid or repulsed.  I could only recognize it as sin, and ask for help.”   Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a Klu Klux Klan robe in my closet or anything.  I’m not a screaming, segregationist type of racist.  The racism I’m talking about is a lot more subtle and harder to identify.  In fact, without things like Jacksonville happening I can think really highly of myself, my life, my friends, my experiences.  No, what I’m talking about is something deep and ugly.  That part of our natures that separate and judge out of fear and ignorance.  It may not be the most heinous expression of racism, but it is racism.  Calling it something a little more forgiving isn’t really that helpful or honest.   

Why am I sharing this?  Three reasons:  first to try to get across that our reaching out to people not in the church is so vital to our health as Christians.  Without honest questions and real dialogue, we fall into self-justifying beliefs, arrogance, and, potentially, an Us/Them attitude that is really exclusion and an excuse to not be “salt and light.”  Don’t fear the questions, beloved-of-God.  Listen to them.  Take them to the Lord.  Ask the elders and more experienced among us about them.  Let them search you.  The Lord can use them to bring humility, maturity, and grace.   

My second reason is to let you know that these kinds of situations are proof that we are on the right track.  Some of what we are doing may seem scary.  It reveals the boundaries of our faith and our belief in God’s goodness and faithfulness.  I want you to know that it’s proof that we are on the right path.  We are not in our strength, looking good, and feeling good about ourselves.  Instead we are in a place of needing His strength.  We can only respond in confession and repentance instead of protection.  Psalm 51.17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  2 Corinthians 12:8 says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

Thirdly, we need to be a transparent community with one another.  I am not immune.  As your pastor it is my privilege to often times lead the way in brokenness and these kinds of revelations.  If you find yourself like me, in a place where you see the ugliness of your soul and wish it were different, then you know that the loving hand of the Lord is upon you.  He is making you like Jesus, fit to walk in his footsteps.  As a community it is important that we be able to share these kinds of things.  They are not shameful.  They are true.  As we share what is true we honor Him who brought us to this truth and we become stronger (and more humble) as a community.  If we don’t share them, we need to be concerned about whether we are living a lie or not.  At the very least we might be stifling a movement of God to bring holiness and righteousness in a new way.    Our goal in all of this, to quote a Shane and Shane song that is running through my head, is ‘May the few and the many see you [the LORD] as you are.”  I would say, “May the few and the many see you as you are through our humility and commitment to truth and confession and not posturing and justifications.”  (Now you know why I’m not a song writer)   I would also appreciate your prayers for what the LORD is doing in me.  I am excited about being transformed, even thought I’m not sure how he is going to do it.  Let me also quickly add, that what I confess is in no way crippling shame.  I am accepted by the Lord based on Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and God’s choosing alone (never on my merit).  What the LORD is doing is loving me and maturing me.  I am not wallowing in loathing or self-pity.  But neither am I pretending that my responses and experience were other than what they were.  

Let me end with a quote from my good friend, Jim Siwy, which seems appropriate to this missive.  It is from Christian Mystics by Ursula King speaking about Teresa of Avila, who is known for her writing about profound visions and inner experiences:

“Although Teresa was given extraordinary mystical favors, she did not consider these essential for spiritual growth: The highest perfection obviously does not consist in interior delights or in great raptures or in visions or in the spirit of prophecy but in having our will so much in conformity with God’s will that there is nothing we know He wills that we do not want with all our desire, and in accepting the bitter as happily as we do the delightful when we know that His Majesty desires it.”